NATIONAL TRUST RESEARCH AND IDEA

I want to focus on sports photography for this project. I checked the national trust website and all the events that they organise. One thing that sticks out is that they seem to have a lot of running events, especially a reoccurring night run.

They have a special page just for that, this is what it says:
"Night Run, organised in partnership with Cotswold Outdoor, is a national programme of after-dark trail running events at the places we look after. Running along moonlit trails through ancient parkland, woodland and gardens is an exciting way of keeping active during the autumn and winter."

They have two routes, Explorer (1-4km) and Adventurer (5-9km). Below is their recent event schedule.

Here's some great info, that I found about their night runs on their website.

"Night Run events help us to support essential ongoing conservation work. Your entry fee will help keep the land you run on special, and make sure our rangers can keep looking after the animals and plants that flourish there. "

People can also run for charity.

"Would you like to run to support a place that's special to you? Many of the National Trust places taking part in the Night Run programme are calling for runners to raise vital funds to help them protect the countryside for future generations. Find out about existing appeals on the website of the place you want to run at. "

Also all runner get Cotswold Outdoor discount, their sponsor.

This is what the runs usually look like. Images have been sources from the national trust website.

My idea is to create advertising posters for these events, something that would attract a wider audience and make people want to be more active. 
I found some images here on Behance, by a photographer called Rasmus and below are some of his images.

Also I found another photographer on instagram doing long exposure images of sports. They've been used in an ad campaign for Nike.

I will be attempting to create similar visuals to that. I have booked lights from kit store and will be doing a test shoot in Epping forest. I have booked the Elinchrom quadra with a softbox and a rotolight. For the actual shoots, I can exchange the rotolight for astera tube lights, kino flo or westcott, also I will be bringing a small led light of mine, just in case. 

So the idea is to put my camera on a tripod, shoot my subject on a trail or road in a park using the elinchrom quadra and then use the continuous lighting to paint running trails behind them and the comp the separate shots in photoshop to get a final image. This is only for the main images, so that's 2 landscapes and 2 portraits. I also really like the two page spread on the brochure, that would be perfect for this type of thing. Leaving me with 4x5 - 20 small images for the postures. Those would probably be of the model doing stretches or close-ups / detail shots of the outfit. 

Due to coronavirus, I won't be able to do the rest of my shoots. Good thing is that I can at least use my test images, that's one poster done! I am planning to go out and shoot for the other posters and brochure as well. 

I have been looking around for more inspiration and here are some more photograher's work that I like. 
Bare in mind the following images you are about to see are absolutely gorgeous.
Will Graham's - Run the Earth project.

Segundo Puig - Nike thights 2017 ad campaign.

Felix Meyer - Night run

Trailrunning with Caja Schöpf - shot by Thomas Marzusch (this one is very national trust)

Bjorn Lexius - shot in Iceland.

There's more, but I don't want to bore you with beautiful images. Now that the idea has changed due to the situation, I will be using natural light only, aka the sun (not the newspaper, the big flaming ball in the sky). I will be checking the weather apps for current weather updates and good times to shoot and will plan my shoots accordingly. I want to do a midday shoot with harsh light and a late afternoon shoot (hoping to get golden hour type beautiful light) Also I haven't given up on the long exposure idea.